The Usable Clown

It is finally spring (well technically it has been spring for a while) and it is time to plan your summer. Fall and Winter are traditionally lean times for clowns. Not as many outdoor parties, other holidays and the cost of those holidays prevent people from hiring clowns for events. Luckily that is behind us and it is time to …

Your clown face is one of the most important parts of your brand as a clown. It needs to be clean, not scary and above all the same every single time you put it on. Having said that I also think that it is very important for your clown face to constantly evolve to reflect changes in your ability to …

It has been a while since we have had a simple list post. Here is one to get you thinking about new skills you could start working on. I am a fan of goals when learning new skills, which is why this is 13 things to learn befor the new year. I would suggest just picking one and mastering it …

Todays post comes directly from my starting days. When I first started this was my number one tool to becoming a better clown. You may notice that this one says “New Clown Notebook”, that is because the original one go destroyed when I left it in the yard and the sprinklers got it. This is the one after that, thus …

It is finally time to finish this series off. We have covered everything from the importance of simplifying everything, practicing, marketing and planning; now we need to coer the final and most difficult step: Executing the plan! Please go back and reread the previous posts and make sure have completed everything in those posts. The more prepared you are the …

The Usable Clown is here to beg your forgiveness. He screwed up. He has spent to much time lately worrying about money and decided to try to charge you guys for your email subscription. Talk about a lame plan. Like most plans of this lame-nitude, it has failed. I am giving up on that and want you guys to know …

As I am sure everyone has noticed, the economy is still in the toilet and as such people are not hiring entertainers with the gusto of previous years. What to do with all this free time? Redesign, Re-invent and Reconnect. Redesign- This could be the perfect opportunity to try a new clown face, develop a new character or put together that awesome …

One of the hardest parts of being a professional entertainer is learning to communicate your abilities through talking. When you are talking to a client, potential client or just some guy in the street it can be hard to get across what exactly you do. How do you explain your amazing juggling routine to someone or discribe the look on …

Recently I performed at an event as a juggler. No clowning, just me my juggling props and a 30 minute show. I was hired by another entertainment company to do the job since they don’t have any jugglers on staff and they paid my standard rate for a juggling show. Overall I had a really good time until the end …

Something to consider when starting out as a clown is how far from home you would like to travel to entertain. A lot of clowns choose to limit the area in which their services are availible to the public. What is a better idea then saying that you aren’t availible in an area is to charge a fee for having …

Today we are going to look into common mistakes new and old clowns make with their makeup. Nose is to Big: We have all seen these clowns, heck for a couple of years I was guilty of this. While a big red nose is the trademark of a clown a smaller nose will make you seem less foreign to children …

Advertising is usually the most costly part of having your own business. Luckily for you clowning is almost self advertised once you get it started, this means that if you have a well put together show and hand a card to every single person that sees you, there is very little left for you to do. This is because most …

I am sure that in some point in your entertaining career you will move from your starting location and have to basically start your business over from scratch. This can be one of the hardest things for your business as well as one of the best things for your business. The first thing to do is to look back on …

As you are trying to grow your business there is a chance you will come into contact with other entertainers: clowns, magicians, balloonists and many others. Some of these people will be positive towards you and some of them will be negative. The important thing to do is to make sure that you are positive towards other entertainers, no matter …

I have recently been spending a large quantity of my performing time at a restaurant working for tips. More specifically making balloons for tips. If you are interested in growing your clown business then it is quite possible that making balloons for tips is just the thing you need to do. As I mentioned in my last post The Call: …